WHO Wants to Ban Names of Diseases like Monkey Pox, Swine Flu or German Measles
Health experts from WHO have recommended a new set of guidelines when it comes to naming human diseases.
They now urge scientists to change the name of diseases like Swine flu, monkey pox, Cooke's disease or German measles to prevent them from having a 'negative impact'.
"This may seem like a trivial issue to some, but disease names really do matter to the people who are directly affected," said Keiji Fukuda, WHO's assistant director-general for health security.
"We've seen certain disease names provoke a backlash against members of particular religious or ethnic communities, create unjustified barriers to travel, commerce and trade, and trigger needless slaughtering of food animals. This can have serious consequences for people's lives and livelihoods."
According to their new guidelines scientists should refrain from naming diseases after geographic locations or people's names - like Spanish Flu, Middle Eastern respiratory syndrome or Chagas disease or Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.
They go on to add that names should in some way contain descriptions of the symptoms associated with the disease.
"It is important that whoever first reports on a newly identified human disease uses an appropriate name that is scientifically sound and socially acceptable," WHO added.
However, not everyone is impressed with WHO's decision to announce these new set of guidelines. Bacteriologist Hugh Pennington said, 'This won't save lives. It comes under the heading of political correctness and I am very sceptical it will have any permanent benefit. As for avoiding upsetting animals, that is a load of rubbish.
'The World Health Organisation is a political organisation - an arm of the UN - which got badly burned by not acting fast enough on Ebola. Well-known diseases have to be called something and changing names causes public confusion and might even be harmful.'
